


Backups

by riverbanks



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Trick or Treat 2017, Trick or Treat: Chocolate Box, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-22 13:26:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12482648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverbanks/pseuds/riverbanks
Summary: Shiro takes stock of the things he still has: his memories, his things -and Keith.





	Backups

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miaou Jones (miaoujones)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miaoujones/gifts).



> _(Happy Halloween, MiaouJones! Hope you enjoy this little gift!)_

The steps coming up behind him are quiet, barely making any sound at all, but Shiro could recognize them from light years of distance. He’s heard them coming so many times before, Shiro could probably hear them a lifetime away.

He watches the stars as Keith walks down the ramp leading out to the greenhouses, shuffles and sits down on the same step as him in the steel ladder hanging above the gardens. He looks down when Keith presses a warm cup into his hands.

“How did you find me here?”

Keith shrugs as Shiro takes the cup from him, breathes into the warm smoke rising up from his drink. It’s blue, it looks viscous, and tastes like nothing he could describe. Shiro has no idea what it is, and he’s not sure Keith knows, either.

“I always find you,” Keith answers with something on his face that might have been a smile, if he wasn’t so tired.

Shiro smiles, a small hum at the back of his throat, and lets a comfortable silence settle between them as Keith too stares into his own drink and then at the gardens below them. He wonders how many times Keith still has to find him before he’ll find himself.

He’s staring and the crates and taking stock, not of the things he’s lost -he’s not ready to let himself go there yet- but of the things he still has. His life. His name. One arm that’s still his own. His dog tags, his driver’s license, his car keys, small things Keith managed to steal from his room before they sealed it off, that serve no purpose here, a thousand lives away from Earth, but are still his, still part of who he is.

There’s a space between then and now in his mind that Shiro can’t fill anymore -but being here with Keith, Shiro knows there _was_ a then. Looking at Keith’s profile and remembering his hair shorter and the cadet uniform, sitting here beside him like they would near the docking bays, watching the stars like they used to watch the jets landing and taking off, hearing Keith drink his sludge with the same graceless noise he would slurp down a can of soda, Shiro remembers things that were real, and that has to mean he once real was, too.

“Hey,” Keith calls, one hand on his knee, and Shiro stares at the back of Keith’s hand, the place where they touch itching, like something is crawling on him. “Shiro? You still here?”

“Yeah,” he says in a short breath, like he’s waking up from a long sleep. He puts one hand on Keith’s shoulder and smiles, like he remembers doing before. “I am now.”

**#**

He falls into old habits, letting muscle memory take him wherever he needs to go. Waking up, rolling out, push-us, sit-ups, pull-ups, twenty laps around the sim room. At some point Coran offers to pull an image from his memories and design a new simulation for them, something that reminds him of the race track at the Garrison, the bleachers where he and Keith first met and everything. It’s not home, but it’s a small comfort, and Coran is good at those.

Keith is the wild card, as he’s always been. One day he’s listening, following, treating Shiro with deference and respect as they practice different maneuvers with the lions outside, trying to figure old tactics to improve, new ways to improvise. The other, he’s in the simulator kneeing Shiro in the ribs and using the leverage to punch him in the ear, dodging Shiro’s dizzy attempts to recover and swing with a roundhouse to his back and a slide right under his punch. It’s good practice, but it leaves Shiro disoriented for a moment, until Keith calls off the training sequence.

“You’re distracted,” Keith says, and Shiro has nothing to say. It’s just stating the obvious.

He presses a hand to his ear until it stops ringing, and Keith frowns at him, the question in his eyes more confused than concerned. He didn’t kick _that_ hard.

Shiro shakes his head, dismissing his worries. It doesn’t hurt, it just rings, like something inside his head is rattling, coming lose, and then he _remembers._

When he comes back to himself, Shiro’s kneeling on the floor, the sweat pooling on the towel around his neck cold and sticky, his throat dry, and Keith sitting in front of him, holding his face in both hands and staring him down with a face blank as a sheet.

“Name and rank, sir” Keith says, and Shiro tries to focus his eyes on Keith’s as he puts the words together in his ears.

“Second Lieutenant Takashi Shirogane, Galaxy Garrison 5th fleet Cruiser-class pilot,” he lists, his voice a monotone, the words coming out on their own as reality shifts and reasserts itself around him, until his lips curl up in a grin. “And still a better pilot than you, cadet.”

Keith snorts at that, letting go and helping Shiro sit down. “You wish.”

Shiro sits still a moment, letting himself readjust, then reaches out for the bottle sitting between Keith’s knees. Keith watches him drink for a tick, then lets himself slide back until he’s lying on the floor, covering his eyes from the harsh white lights of the room with an arm draped over his face. Shiro follows suit, lying down beside him and letting himself catch his breath.

“You’re not anymore, you know,” Keith mutters from under his arm, and when Shiro turns to look at him, Keith is staring back. “My senior officer. We don’t have to play it like that.”

Shiro sighs, looking away and staring at the lights above and let them burn his sight until all he sees is white. “How do you wanna play it, then?”

“We’re friends, right,” and it’s not a question. “Can we at least be friends, right now?”

It’s a compromise, and Shiro knows right there that this is a slippery slope to start tiptoeing near, but he’s willing to make it, if only to dispense with the ranks, with the strange taste they leave in his mouth. “Sure,” he says, stretching his back on the floor and feeling the skin on his side pull where Keith kneed him earlier. “Sure, we can do that.”

And Shiro finds that, yes, he does want this right now. Whatever else the galra took from him, Shiro still has himself, and the Shiro he remembers had more than ranks, car keys and dog tags -he had friends, and a joy in the things around him that he wants to find again, and he had Keith.

“Shiro, hey,” Keith asks when he’s gone long enough just staring at the ceiling and thinking about nothing, but also remembering and filing away the shapes and smells that old race track. “You still there?”

And Shiro smiles without a word, reaching out to ruffle Keith's hair like it's three years ago again, because part of him is, and part of him... who knows. But Keith is (still) there. No matter how many times he slips away, every time he opens his eyes Keith is right there again, and that -knowing that he can’t truly lose himself because Keith will always find him again- is good enough to keep him here for now.  

 


End file.
